June 23, 2018

House flipping, and why we need to ban it. (Cross-posted on my Facebook page)

The whole process of "flipping" is a tit on a boar. Useless. The idea starts with the usual scammer's dream: buy a house on the cheap because it's in terrible shape, then do cosmetic fix-up, resulting in the proverbial silk purse made from a sow's ear, sell it, get obscene profit. Do it enough times, and you get a TV program on the HGTV channel, THEN you can fly into a City, rent their basketball arena, conduct a half-day seminar on How To Flip for $500 each person, make even MORE obscene profit and fly back out of town...

Okay, take an attrractive city, put an army of house-flippers to work in it. What's the result? Housing which isn't technically improved all that much, and the improvements which ARE made are cosmetic, so in ten years, the house will be a crap-hole all over again (and it's usually in a crappy neighborhood anyway). But Wait! There's More! The flipper is going to SELL this house immediately, and make maybe 20% to 50% on their "investment dollar" doing so, then THEY leave, take that money with them, so your CITY makes almost nothing from the deal and life DOES NOT IMPROVE FOR YOU.

The result of this flip, multiplied by hundreds to thousands of them in your City, means a huge jump in the value of YOUR home, much higher taxes, and the loss of "affordability" in your housing market, which means YOU are now stuck with the crowds of yuppies who buy the flips. They come in to town, earn obscenely high salaries for doing something with bits and bytes, stay a couple of years, invariably vote Democratic, then leave.

I have a solution to all this malaise. We use the power of taxation to keep the flippers away. Here's how we do it: First, define property owners by how long they have LIVED IN their homes: over 30 years, they are "Pioneers". Over 10 years up to 30, they are "Sustainers". 5 to 10 years, they are "Locals" and under 5 years, they are "Transients". Real estate taxes are assessed on a sliding scale by these categories. Pioneers pay the smallest RATE, Transients the highest. Any tax rate higher than Local, the difference is used to LOWER the rate for Pioneers. Now for the flippers: their obscene profit is taxed at 50%, and that money is used SPECIFICALLY to lower the homeowner taxes, across the board, except for the Transient level. Secondary idea: use this tax money to fund a grant system for those who actually want to build NEW housing, because new houses are built with new materials to new codes, are more efficient, by far, than cosmetically-changed 40-70 year-old housing stock.

Make these changes, and the flipper-scammers will put your City in the rear-view mirror, and within 10 years, real estate values will start to return more towards normal, more towards what they were before the flipping-craze hit town.

Oh, by the way, those Pioneer home owners? They are amost invariably more fiscally responsible, are better neighbors than the yuppie hordes anyway.

November 10, 2017

Typepad (the blogging company which puts up with me). They have an accounting program so D.U.M.B. that it can't tell a renewed credit card, ON THE SAME ACCOUNT from an expired one, so I get nasty-grams.

The Media: their transgressions against the lawful body politic (President Trump) are so egregious, I am not sure I have faith in Freedom of the Press any more. In fact, comes the "Un-Do", then the "Re-Do", I am not sure that the Second Constitution will even HAVE press freedom. At least there MUST be penalties for political advocacy. Media, you are permitted to report all the facts you want, and you are even permitted to opine (but opinions need to be labeled as such and not be passed off as fact). You NEVER have permission under the 1A to lie and deliberately perpetrate falsehoods DESIGNED to make the work of Government difficult or even impossible. That's PROPAGANDA, and it is NOT protected by the 1A as the Founders installed it in the Bill of Rights. Spewing those lies will be HANGING offenses in the Second Republic.

Lear Capital, Inc: I am tired of their lying advocacy about the value of precious metals. Silver has traded narrowly between $12-16 for years, and sales are so-so, so Lear attempts to pump them up with the wild claim that silver will rise to $200 in the near future. Where is Treasury on this, where is FCC? Outrageous lying claim to sell their wares. Anyone else would be hammered for this crap, why isn't Lear Capital? Is the FIX in? BTW, you don't have to MINE silver anymore. About 90% of world silver requirements are supplied by recycling, and the rest is easily obtained by an electrolytic extraction process using seawater. The silver salts are removed from the sea water. All you need is a pipe bringing you ocean water and a large electrical supply.

Jeff Sessions: Sessions is the biggest albatross around Trump's neck now, and he should be fired. Of all of Trump's Drain the Swamp agenda, the only part of it Sessions is keen on is Immigration. He's bearish on illegals and Sanctuary cities, but hasn't actually changed much. On everything else, the PHONY "Russiagate" the Dems conjured up to hide their own treason to sell weapons-grade uranium-ore concentrate to Putin, the attempts to steal the 2016 election by the super-snake Hillary Clinton, the HUGE and OBVIOUS money-laundering processes of the Democratic Party via the Clinton Foundation, the Pay-for-Play, etc, etc, ad nauseam, Sessions "RECUSED" himself from all of that. The FBI, Sessions' primary investigatory tool, is as corrupt as the day is long, Sessions does nothing. Fire his Deep-State ass, Mr. Trump!

The NFL: Despite a full month of the effective Boycott, the Deep State backs the culture-destroying thugs of the NFL and their thug-tolerant owners. Congress, don't wait for Tax Reform, the Deep State is going to Deep-Six it anyway, separate out that removal of tax subsidy from pro sports and pass it as a stand-alone bill. If you do that, SOME of you worthless wankers might actually get re-elected.

I could go on, and on, and on, but these ought to give you the message, and now I need a stress-relieving nap.

October 15, 2017

After watching more UniParty spin on Fox news this bright, sunny morning in Stumptown, I felt compelled to point out something that I and a few other more astute political observers have known for a long time - there is a HUGE difference between those who favor the expansion of Global Trade from our shores and those who favor the expansion of Global Government, both here and overseas.

I will put this as simply as I can, because the One-World-Order types, the "Globalists", usually attempt to cloak their support of Global Government in the fog of international trade.

Today, I listened to a "Cloaker", Laura Ingraham, discuss "Global Strategy" with the Fox News Sunday guest anchor, James Rosen. The political subject at hand was the de-certification of Iran's compliance with the idiotarian deal that the then-appeaser-in-chief, Barack Obama, made with the Mad Mullahs. President Trump's world-view on this deal includes ALL the global perfidy of Islamist Iran, not just their bob-and-weave stance on nuclear inspection. The European Government has not changed THEIR world-view on Iran since they agreed with Obama's appeasement of the mullahs and they are horrified that Trump seems to be dismantling the Neville-Chamberlain-ish appeasement treaty right before their shit-in-their-own-messkit leaders' eyes. Europe threw Israel under their double-decker bus-wheels years ago, in fact, I was there when, in 1956, the Brits failed to defeat militant Egypt and the Suez Crisis resulted, a scant eight years into the life of the Jewish State's existence. Europe is afraid of Iran. Yes, a few Iranian missiles COULD reach Europe, but both France and England have nuclear missile subs and could easily destroy Iran five times over. Iran may or may not have nukes to tip those missiles yet, depends on who you listen to. I listen to Israel, and they don't seem to be too worried just yet. There really is NO basis for the present EU worry and defiance of Trump, they ought to be jumping aboard his de-certification bandwagon, but instead, they oppose it.

Hmmmm. It makes NO sense for Europe to oppose de-cert, so why are they doing it?

The only answer for the Europeans' Iran de-cert reticence which makes sense is Trump's opposition to Globalism, and his expansion of US Global Trade. The EU (Common Market), far from being the trading powerhouse it claimed it was going to build some forty years ago, is a paper tiger. EU goods are not competitive, for the most part, because of taxes the EU imposes to support their member-state's socialist money-hunger. The Chinese have beaten the Europeans in their own market, likewise the Japanese, the Thais, etc, etc. We don't do too badly over there, either (see Ford cars).

The lesson for today, then, is just this: whenever you see the word "Global" in front of anything, start parsing the words of the speaker, but first, think for a few seconds about their motives. Are they the One-World-Order type? If they are, a complete line of horse-puckey follows. If they talk Global Trade, but are really boosting globalISM, they are NOT, repeat, NOT a conservative. Write them out of your life.

October 12, 2017

Big Brouhaha! Trump gives a typical Twitter-length statement, and now the leftoids are all over him like stink on donkey poop.

Even the best "TV Judge" out there, Andrew Napolitano, jumped on Trump's suggestion (story not on the website yet as of 1100 PDT, was on Fox News earlier in the ayem).

Trump made an error of omission, that's all. He seemed to suggest that his Administration could go after NBC's broadcast licenses. Judge Napolitano said no, bad idea, first amendment, etc, blah, blah, blah. The Judge was wrong, though, and had an affirmative duty (legal term, the Judge will know what that means) to point out that it WOULD be perfectly okay for President Trump to advocate that his citizen-supporters get involved in this process (removing licenses).

Look up the FCC site and there will be a condensed-format paragraph. It will be tabbed. Go to the "Links and Maps" tab, and you will find the links you need to make a comment about the station's politics. This link was titled "Correspondence relating to application..." Unless the stations cheat somehow, your comment HAS to be considered with license renewal comes up. Note that your letter will have to be sent via land-mail, address given.

That's all there is to it. Have fun. Help out President Trump. If enough of us do this, it WILL get to the stations' honchos.

August 16, 2017

In police work, "evidence" is any fact(s) which help the investigator prove that the alleged perpetrator did break the law. Some evidence is obvious: was the suspect at the scene of the crime or not? Other evidence is not as obvious: can unknown witnesses be discovered who can establish the suspect's presence at the crime scene? Finally, some evidence is obscure, such as who might know the suspect and be able to suggest if suspect might be the type to commit this crime? These three examples go to the quality of the evidence, and when the investigator turns the case in for prosecution, the legal quality of the evidence is the primary factor in deciding whether the case is prosecuted or not.

This primer on quality of evidence is taught in every police academy in the free world, because courts are required to consider the best evidence when deciding guilt or innocence, not just here in the USA, but in every Nation which has a liberty-based legal system. Note that the Best Evidence Rule covers the admission of documentary evidence, but the Court also considers the quality of other evidence, such as eyewitness testimony. You don't want to be tried for crimes in the other kind of nations where the Judge has sole discretion to use evidence or not, and how to evaluate evidence or not.

In my first Police Academy (I attended two because of a break in police service caused by being called back into the military: I was just over the five-year point when I went back to copping, and Oregon's DPSST (POST) rules say five years is the max, no waivers.), I was taught that evidence quality is determined by the concept of directness: the farther the evidence was from being totally direct (e.g.: suspect arrested at crime scene, loot in pockets), the lower it's quality, the more work had to be done to establish it for Court presentation. As a rookie, I made my first Armed Robbery case on one eyewitness account. The eyewitness had observed the suspect drive his 1963 Chevy Impala hardtop to the drive-up window of the burger joint, had observed as he presented his gun, got a bag of cash and drove away. The eyewitness wrote down the robbers description, wrote down the license plate, then as I arrived, that witness handed me his note, which I entered into evidence, along with all the other interview results. I sent my APB, attention to the hometown cops of the registered owner, and 90 minutes later, the local gendarmes there (next state over) had him in jail. I got a rare Detective Division attaboy for that one and the suspect plead guilty to Robbery First, getting ten years in prison. No plea bargain was acceptable to the DA for that case, built as it was on the highest quality of evidence.

Take the above basic lesson in criminal justice, and apply it (or, I should say try to apply it) to the case of Hillary Rodham Clinton and her illegal email server, now widely assumed to have been hacked by the Russians. Now read this article, R.T.W.T., and apply your quality of evidence evaluation to the work the FBI (under Director Comey, whose wife had just gotten an $8.5M defense contract) which Bureau then said, and has been saying ever sine, "oh, those evil Russians".

As I read the Net Right Daily article, I recognize that the FBI's claim of hacking evidence doesn't withstand the first layer of evaluation, let alone the three layers which the article's author applied to that bogus claim. You try my evaluation and see what you get.

August 05, 2017

Most news media use a code of rules known as a "Style Book". This code tells them how to write, what to include in an article and what to leave out of it. The problem is, very few of these "Style Books" have ever been published, in fact, the only one I've heard of is the one for the New York Times (no link to the Enemy).

I think I've caught my local fishwrap, the Oregonian, in a Style-Book violation in this article. The article, referring to a Left vs. Right protest scheduled this weekend, allows the Black Bloc (their chosen name before they started taking Soros Bucks) to call itself "Antifa", and then amplifies on that by letting them say that they are anti-fascist. This is a classic propaganda trick to label the entire Right with a historically-hateful name.

Numerous articles (here is just one of many) have pointed out that "Antifa" is actually closer politically to Fascism than those who march under the US Flag, but you will NOT find that in the Oregonian article. On the other hand, you find that Patriot Prayer USA, the oppo in this protest, is referred to without the "USA" attached, but their Facebook site specifically refers to them WITH the USA attached. The editing of Patriot Prayer USA's name, while allowing Antifa not only to use THEIRS, but to give THEIR definition of it, is nothing less than editorializing on the Front Page, a deceptive practice.

I wrote the Editors and demanded to see their Style Book:

Editors:

Have you ever published your Style Book? I am curious to see if it actually allows a Leftist faction unchallenged use of their adopted sobriquet, but not a faction from the Right. I refer to Saturday's article on changing strategies of protesters. The Black Bloc is referred to by "Antifa", but the other side, which would use some variation of "America" in their name, is not allowed to. When you do this, you have abandoned objective reportage in favor of editorializing, your privilege, but not on the front page.

Publish the Style Book please. If you refuse, we may be assured that you have violated it's rules.

August 02, 2017

This blogger uses the term "Uniparty" to describe a certain flavor of politics which has never been exactly established, has zero legal basis to run candidates for election in ANY State, but as of now, controls the direction of our Congress.

I would define Uniparty this way:

Uniparty, a political group-think which fails to acknowledge the primacy of the US Constitution, and instead, operates on Globalist economic and political principles.

All the elected Democrats, by Party platform, subscribe to the wider Uniparty, and at least twenty percent of the elected Republicans do as well. The result for NON-Uniparty Republican President Trump has been that most of his America-first agenda requiring Congressional approval has been blocked. I am convinced that if Jeb Bush had been elected, or even Marco Rubio, either of those Uniparty Republicans would have gotten more of their agendas through Congress by now. Of course, there is the likelihood that most of those agenda items would have been agreeable to the Democrats.

The Uniparty is anti-Nationalist, by it's very definition. Globalism requires participants to suppress nationalism.

The issue, in a nutshell, is that the Founders never imagined a Uniparty. They were Nationalist to a man. They believed in Nationalism, and with their Constitution, directed American Nationalism to be the ruling political concept of this land. Their Constitution is still in effect. Now come the Globalists, the Uniparty, and their ruling political concept is the polar opposite of American Nationalism. The Uniparty's politics are, by definition, UN-Constitutional.

President Trump's politics are primarily Nationalist. He clearly puts the United States of America's interests first in all of his executive decisions. He is clearly being attacked by the Globalists, who run the Legislative Branch for the moment. The mainstream media gives hours of time and column-miles of print to globalists who attack Trump's Nationalism, but allow American Nationalism only the slightest mention.

The years 2008-2016 were marked by Globalist American leadership, and look at the mess President Obama left behind: our industry, our education, our international power were all severely degraded by Uniparty politics made worse by the racial suppression of American Nationalism. In the 2016 election, Americans declared that they wanted their Nation back, and we elected President Donald Trump to pull the USA back from it's insertion into the moral and political quagmire of Globalism.

We, the People, now have a choice to make, and it is a clear choice: We can finally support the President we elected, in his efforts to respect and improve American Nationalism, or we can lower our political aim and shuffle along with the world's Globalists towards a corrupt and uncertain future.

May 28, 2017

During rush hour on Friday, on a busy Max train platform, a whacko who considers himself Christian (he isn't, follows ZERO Christian principles), targeted two women, one wearing a Hijab (Islamic clothing article) and began to rant at them. Two transit customers immediately gave a heated verbal response while others watched. The crazy pulled a knife and started slashing. Before it was over, the two loudest Social Justice Warriors lay dead, throats cut, and another bystander, her role not clear, was wounded as well (she will survive). The perp ran off, but was quickly apprehended by the police.

Now the fallout begins. Today, another Social Justice Warrior who also happens to be a newspaper Editor, Samantha Swindler, writes an editorial WHICH IS PUBLISHED ON PAGE TWO AS NEWS!!! If you get the Oregonian, you will note that she is NOT identified as an Editor, and in fact, her editorial is in the news section. That's a HUGE mistake, but it shows what the mass media is all about these days: claiming to inform us while actually propagandizing us.

Ms. Swindler leads her article:

A white Christian extremist is accused of murdering two men who stood up to defend a pair of teenage girls being harassed for their religion on a MAX train.

This is where unchecked hate can lead.

She ends it:

No one can turn away. The brave must stand up.

We cannot let fear silence us.

The Editor said NOTHING about the obvious bad choice of the slasher's victims to face a crazy man down. When the facts of this event are stacked up, the SJWs' bad choices are what led directly to their wounds. It has "bad optics" to say this, but the fact that these 2 people loudly opposed the perp's crazy, and also FREE speech got them killed.

The newspaper won't have the guts to put that out there, so I will.

Folks, it's sometimes called the "New York System", but when in the public, ESPECIALLY when riding transit with it's confined spaces and crowds limiting your freedom of defensive movement, you simply DO NOT GET VERBAL, no matter the provocation. Once that man pulled his knife, someone HAD to get cut unless a better actual (not social justice) Warrior was there to do proper battle with him. Even a gun-bearer would have had a hard time in that crowd. There would have been a large chance of a bullet striking an innocent. The bottom line there is that once the crazy felt challenged enough to get his knife out, de-escalation had no chance.

As for Editor Swindler, YOUR bad choices in your article may just get more people killed. The Publisher should have known better than to let you pull this stunt.

May 22, 2017

As I read the newspaper this morning, (Monday, May 22, 2017) a letter to the editor jumped right off the page at me. I classify this letter as the quintessential example of "kool-aid drinking" 1, but it illustrates a far darker future for the USA. Here is the letter:

Impeach.Now

The fact that there are multiple articles in my city's daily newspaper, The Oregonian, reporting on the reprehensible conduct of President Donald Trump should erase any doubt the the president is a threat to the stability, security and health of our nation.

Impeach Trump. Now.

Jessica Sweeney, Southwest Portland

Consider:

This was a "sidebar" letter, right next to the main Editorial, not on the Letters page, so it has higher importance to the Editors.

This person writes an understandable letter. There are a couple of minor grammar errors, but it's far above the writing standards taught in today's public schools.

She (assumed gender) expresses a central idea clearly and concisely: "If it's in my newspaper, it must be correct, and I will accept what my newspaper tells me."

She is likely a leader in her community.

She is, without doubt, a dangerous person. Her status of danger is confirmed by her use of mass media to sell her "kool-aid drinking" as correct behavior.

Your blogger Googled that name (search term: Jessica Sweeney Portland), and Google seems to think that this is her. I have no clue why Google presented her first. Facebook has dozens of Jessica Sweeneys. If Google is correct, (unlike Sweeney, I won't make that assumption) she is, indeed, a leader of her community, responsible for shaping thought in young minds.

The danger, of course, lies not only in her (Google-reported) position (which again, I am NOT assuming), but it also lies in the societal acceptance of this erroneous type of thought and expression Sweeney advocates. Polls during the past election season indicated that somewhere between 48 and 53 percent of American voters have similar thought processes as Jessica Sweeney. They have accepted EVERYTHING put out by the mass media, which itself is hell-bent on destroying traditional (successful) American societal values and replacing those with regimented, collective thought processes straight out of Marxism.

The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America was put there, in FIRST PLACE, to imbue all of us with the idea that free expression was MOST vital to the survival of this Nation. The Marxists have turned our Bill of Rights on it's ear, and now, the First Amendment means ONLY to them that they may continue to subvert the very Constitution in which it resides.

1. "Kool-aid drinking" refers not to the swillable product here, but to the fact that cult-leader Reverend Jim Jones used it to carry the poison with which he murdered hundreds of his church congregation. It is still debated as to how many of those congregants WILLINGLY drank the fatal poison, but one may conclude that most of them did so willingly.

March 30, 2017

On Thursdays, this blog has a Tradition, listing the Thursday Thuds, those items of national interest, the owners of which have tried to make us believe are important, but they attract our attention ONLY by the huge thud-sound they make as they crash. Without further ado, here are the thuds:

Trump thudded: he tweeted this morning: "The Freedom Caucus will hurt the entire Republican agenda if they don't get on the team, & fast. We must fight them, & Dems, in 2018!" Of course, the so-called "freedom caucus" is a group of constitutional conservatives in Congress. Trump threatens them and by doing so, marginalized at least 30% of his own base. That's stupid, Mr. Trump. T.H.U.D.

Congress thuds (again): "The "Russia hacked US Elections" bulltwaddle: now Congress puts in an Escape Strategy, telling We The Peeps how it will all wind up: more blather in committee, then some SECRET blather in committee, then we are done. Okay, Congress, WHAT about that process of secrecy will convince any of We The Peeps that any of this actually happened, and who would be at fault for it? Answer is NONE. T.H.U.D.

Fox News thuds (again): Headline: "I.C.E. shames sanctuary cities", followed by a list of places where I.C.E. has issued deportation detainers which have been ignored. The failure here is the whole idea of "shaming". As I understand the PeeCee world, the very idea of using shame to accomplish a goal is supposed to be wrong, wrong, wrong. I.C.E. is not shaming anyone, it is just providing a list of which political jurisdictions ignore the Federal requests for local law enforcement to help them do their job. Fox, you leaned left again and your message is a T.H.U.D.

Trump thuds again: This one is a missed opportunity, but it reveals a bad policy failure in the Trump White House. Trump has taken action to remove the Left's agenda item of restricting the supply of cheap power in the power grid. Doing that gave the Left, or would have given the Left if Hillaroon had been elected, a huge tool of control over the economy. Electric power turns the wheels of the economy. When there isn't enough, parts of the economy must beg for more and kiss Leftie ass to get it. THAT is the most important factor behind ending the War On Coal, but all Trump can blather about is "Holy" Jobs. Look, jobs are an important INDICATOR of the health of our economy, but restoring the FREEDOM in the economy is FAR more important. Tell us that, Mr. Trump, your current Jobs blather falls a little flat, and does so with a T.H.U.D.

Trump thuds again, part trois: Mr. Trump, Obama and Kerry signed some sort of an accord in Paris last year to perpetuate the CLIMATE SCAM. This accord was never presented to the Senate to ratify, so it is NOT a "Treaty", just an Executive Order of Obama. Mr. Trump, RESCIND that turd, and while you're doing that, make it a personal habit whenever you mention Climate to include the word SCAM along with it. If you are pressured to suggest what the POLICY of the USA is towards "Climate Change", simply reply, "It's God's work, our job is to notice it and marvel at how He works" or something like that. Every time the Left mentions Climate (Scam), there is a YUGE opportunity to hammer them with the fraud aspects involved. You aren't doing that, Mr. Trump, so your Policy wonks have made a big T.H.U.D.

Okay then, a Quinella of Thuds, and the majority of them are from Mr. Trump's place. That should tell us all something.